Evaluation of Major Membrane Protein-I as a Serodiagnostic Tool of Pauci-bacillary Leprosy

We have previously shown that the serodiagnosis using major membrane protein-II (MMP-II) is quite efficient in diagnosing leprosy. However, the detection rate of pauci-bacillary (PB) leprosy patients is still low. In this study, we examined the usefulness of major membrane protein-I (MMP-I) from M. leprae. The MMP-I-based serodiagnosis did not show significantly high detection rate. However, when the mixture of MMP-I and MMP-II antigens (Ags) was used, we detected 94.4 % of multi-bacillary (MB) leprosy, and 39.7 % of PB patients. There were little correlation between the titers of anti-MMP-I antibodies (Abs) and that of anti-MMP-II Abs in PB patients’ sera. Ten out of 46 MMP-II-negative PB leprosy patients were MMP-I positive, so that the detection rate of PB leprosy patient increased from 39.7 % to 53.8 % by taking either test positive strategy. We concluded that MMP-I can complement the MMP-II-based serodiagnosis of leprosy.